[Q] Rob's I9505 battery test. Quite an interesting read - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
I started doing some battery tests today as I think my battery is draining faster than the quoted figures on this forum.
Please note the following, tests were carried out with Power saving ENABLED, 4g ENABLED, brightness on auto, wifi off, sync off, GPS off, bluetooth off, playing full screen and all the air gestures/eye tracking scroll off
Test 1 - from 100% battery charge
Play the movie Casino Royale (1080p) - roughly 145 minutes. Battery drop from 100% to 80% = -20%.
Average battery consumption of 1% for every 7.25 minutes played.
Next test was carried away straight after. Therefore perhaps the phone could still be hot causing the battery to drain faster.
Test 2 - from 79% battery charge
Play the movie Never Back Down (1080p) - roughly 113 minutes. Battery drop from 79% to 57% =-22%
Average battery consumption of 1% for every 5.13 minutes played.
The fluctuation of battery consumption was roughly 29% between the two tests. Between the two, average consumption of 6.19minutes per 1% consumption. Therefore anticipated playback time from a full charge is estimated at 10.3hr
This leads me to believe that either the battery "gauge" on the phone is either inaccurate or (more likely) my battery is somewhat faulty. Why else would the efficiency change so much? With my very limited knowledge, I can only come to the conclusion it is linked to the device's heat.
My questions:
A) Are these consumption figures in line with everyone else?
B) Why would the battery consumption fluctuate like this
C) My battery is way more efficient playing movies then it is listening to music while using whatsapp. Is this normal?

A) yes your battery is good if not better than some other's
B) on every phone i experinced the battery drops lower from 100% than it does from 75% and from 40% it really drops faster
C) because your using the internet which consumes a lot of battery

Your approach is flawed:
Don't start at 100% because it may say that but could be less as the battery is not kept charging once it's full. As a result it could be a couple of points below 100 and you wouldn't know. There was an article about this somewhere on this site.
Also, you must use the same video file to get the same result. Utilization and load depend mainly on bitrate and codec used, not the length and/or resolution in itself.

Cheers Ewok, quite new to this and didnt realise that a different video could have a different effect on the efficiency

Related

Galaxy S display using 70%+ battery

Hi,
My girlfriend has recently bought a Galaxy S. It has not been rooted or flashed. She's having a problem where the display is using 70% of the battery, even with the brightless set low, as shown under Settings -> About Phone -> Battery
Unplugged for 7h 15m 28s
Display - 70%
Cell standby - 10%
Phone idle - 5%
Android System - 5%
Android Core Apps - 3%
Android OS - 3%
Internet - 2%
Has anyone heard of this before?
What can we do to fix it?
Thanks
Scott
scott9824 said:
Hi,
My girlfriend has recently bought a Galaxy S. It has not been rooted or flashed. She's having a problem where the display is using 70% of the battery, even with the brightless set low, as shown under Settings -> About Phone -> Battery
Unplugged for 7h 15m 28s
Display - 70%
Cell standby - 10%
Phone idle - 5%
Android System - 5%
Android Core Apps - 3%
Android OS - 3%
Internet - 2%
Has anyone heard of this before?
What can we do to fix it?
Thanks
Scott
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Likewise, the display is draining the most battery comparatively to other things. (I'm using the lowest settings)
Im not speaking from research (how other superphones behave), but wild guess - it is normal for all touch screens, especially bigger ones.
Touch or not - it doesn't matter.
Screen technology and size matters.
See 4" has around 4 times the area of 2" display.
How long was the display active for ? This is normal if you have it turned on a lot at high brightness settings.
i'm not surprised even if the 70% is true, because my HTC Athena is a power hog when i keep the screen on for a long time, the juice que sucked up in a couple of hours of use.
the SGS i9000 is having a better run for the power.
at least i can play 3D games (ASPHAL5) in it without worrying about running out of battery like with my old HTC Athena
scott9824 said:
Hi,
My girlfriend has recently bought a Galaxy S. It has not been rooted or flashed. She's having a problem where the display is using 70% of the battery, even with the brightless set low, as shown under Settings -> About Phone -> Battery
Unplugged for 7h 15m 28s
Display - 70%
Cell standby - 10%
Phone idle - 5%
Android System - 5%
Android Core Apps - 3%
Android OS - 3%
Internet - 2%
Has anyone heard of this before?
What can we do to fix it?
Thanks
Scott
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See, you are kind of reading this information wrong, IMO. Yes, the display usese 60+% of power, regardless of brightness settings, if you have the display on. Here's the simple math:
Standby time (no sync, no 3G, basically, literally just standing by, screen off doing nothing: 24-25 days
screen on time: 4-7 hours.
You can see that the screen sucks SOOOO much more power than just about everything else your gf had going on in her usage, there wasn't a high usage scenario other than the screen. However, if you use something like GPS the stats will "look better" but you'll have less battery because it'll go from screen to 40% and GPS to 30% but your battery would be nearly dead.
Also, if she just went to sleep then Cell standby and Cell idle jump by 1-5% each and then you have "better looking" statistics.
This essentially means, if you use the phone with the display a large percentage of the time that the phone is unplugged, expect these percentages. I unplug my phone at night, when I wake up my display percentage is 0% (not necessarily better than 70%, because it's usage dependent), then I go to work, so I might run unplugged for 20 hours, use 8% of my battery with my display reading at 20% of the power used. Then, I'll go home and play with it and it's upto 40%, the moral is that it's good to know how much your battery is used on various tasks, but anywhere from 20-70% is normal depending on how much you actually have the display on while it's unplugged.
70% sounded right. There was a youtube VDO that dissemble galaxy s awhile back that really give a good perspective.
The CPU, GPU, GPS, memories etc etc almost fit on your thumb. They are so miniturised and so small. The rest are chassis, batteries and screens taking up almost all the space.
So it is no surprise that the screen should be what guzzling down all the batteries.
didnt know it uses that much...
She's having a problem where the display is using 70% of the battery. [...] What can we do to fix it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The easiest way to fix this is by installing & running multiple applications that consume a lot of battery power. This should lower the percentage of battery power that the display consumes significantly.
(Only posting this because you already got more helpful answers in this thread)
alovell83 said:
See, you are kind of reading this information wrong, IMO. Yes, the display usese 60+% of power, regardless of brightness settings, if you have the display on. Here's the simple math:
Standby time (no sync, no 3G, basically, literally just standing by, screen off doing nothing: 24-25 days
screen on time: 4-7 hours.
You can see that the screen sucks SOOOO much more power than just about everything else your gf had going on in her usage, there wasn't a high usage scenario other than the screen. However, if you use something like GPS the stats will "look better" but you'll have less battery because it'll go from screen to 40% and GPS to 30% but your battery would be nearly dead.
Also, if she just went to sleep then Cell standby and Cell idle jump by 1-5% each and then you have "better looking" statistics.
This essentially means, if you use the phone with the display a large percentage of the time that the phone is unplugged, expect these percentages. I unplug my phone at night, when I wake up my display percentage is 0% (not necessarily better than 70%, because it's usage dependent), then I go to work, so I might run unplugged for 20 hours, use 8% of my battery with my display reading at 20% of the power used. Then, I'll go home and play with it and it's upto 40%, the moral is that it's good to know how much your battery is used on various tasks, but anywhere from 20-70% is normal depending on how much you actually have the display on while it's unplugged.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, but that's the thing, I have a Desire and if used similarly (with brightness set highest) mine shows:
Android System 31%
Cell standby 21%
Wi-Fi 21%
Phone idle 16%
Display 11%
I thought the Galaxy S's screen is supposed to be more power efficient than the Desires so that's why it doesn't make sense to me. Again today her battery use shows:
Display 61%
Cell standby 17%
Phone idle 10%
Android OS 6%
Android System 3%
Internet 2%
So I think either my phone (Desire) is reporting the battery use wrong, her phone (Galaxy S) is reporting it wrong or the display is using more than it should? Now I had a similar battery % when I flashed a few 2.2 roms onto my phone, but people were saying that was because the drivers weren't correct. (I haven't flashed 2.2 recently)
Cheers
Scott
scott9824 said:
Hi,
My girlfriend has recently bought a Galaxy S. It has not been rooted or flashed. She's having a problem where the display is using 70% of the battery, even with the brightless set low, as shown under Settings -> About Phone -> Battery
Unplugged for 7h 15m 28s
Display - 70%
Cell standby - 10%
Phone idle - 5%
Android System - 5%
Android Core Apps - 3%
Android OS - 3%
Internet - 2%
Has anyone heard of this before?
What can we do to fix it?
Thanks
Scott
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello,
Same happened to me, but I used live wallpaper. When I turned to the simple wallpaper the usage from 75% dropped to 50% -keeping all my other activities constant.
Chryssa
I don't think that the info displayed by android is very accurate.
I get about 55% too though.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Just press on the display-bit, and you can see how many hours/minutes it's been on.
19 hours since unplugged:
Android OS: 36%
Cell Standby: 25%
Phone Idle: 18%
Display: 14%
Wi-fi: 3%
Android System: 2%
Those 14% is 31minutes continious use...
31 minutes of Display time is nothing over 19 hours, hence the low percentage. Mine shows approx. 50% usage when it's been used say almost 2 hours and phone awake time 14 hours.
For the OP, if you don't tell us how long the display has been switched on ... all the answer will be just guessing
As everybody says, the display is always the bigger battery consumer unless you use your phone as a mp3 player or just a phone to receive call.
If you go on the web, play games, read mails, use maps ... the display will always be the biggest ( maybe the gps can go higher ... )
On my side I have 65% of battery left after 7h unplugged
50% of display for 1h4mn
21% of android OS
13% of cell standby
8% of phone idle
It's all down to the comparatively slow advancement of battery technology.
Screens are getting bigger, higher resolution and more power-hungry. Just the same as processors and GPUs need more juice, new wireless standards are introduced and multi-tasking becomes popular.
We've come from dumbphones (eg: the old Nokias) used almost solely used for calling and sms to phones that handle half the stuff in our lives, yet they're still using almost exactly the same battery technology to power it.
Simply put, the smarter the phone, the more power hungry it will usually be. And the Galaxy S is currently the smartest phone of the market.
Samsung compensated by fitting a larger battery, but they can't perform miracles with the aging battery tech.
Take a look at the x-ray scans and teardowns of the iPad; 80% of its internal volume is battery space to allow it to last for 10 hours! Sadly phones don't have the same space luxury without the rear getting chunky.
I'm hoping increased capacity batteries are released like the Hero had, as the Galaxy S is large but thin enough that some extra volume on the back wouldn't be much of a problem.
scott9824 said:
Hi,
My girlfriend has recently bought a Galaxy S. It has not been rooted or flashed. She's having a problem where the display is using 70% of the battery, even with the brightless set low, as shown under Settings -> About Phone -> Battery
Unplugged for 7h 15m 28s
Display - 70%
Cell standby - 10%
Phone idle - 5%
Android System - 5%
Android Core Apps - 3%
Android OS - 3%
Internet - 2%
Has anyone heard of this before?
What can we do to fix it?
Thanks
Scott
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is just fine! It's just the percentage guys.
Think about it this way.
Compared to the energy consumption of the display other things uses much less energy.
However on my Galaxy S, I played 6 hours (almost 3, 720p Movies) continuously. Isn't it just awesome on a device having 800x480 Crisp Display that only weighs 118 grams?
karunadheera said:
That is just fine! It's just the percentage guys.
Think about it this way.
Compared to the energy consumption of the display other things uses much less energy.
However on my Galaxy S, I played 6 hours (almost 3, 720p Movies) continuously. Isn't it just awesome on a device having 800x480 Crisp Display that only weighs 118 grams?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With brightness set to auto-brightness or max or min?
@OP - this is very normal. I always get the same type of readings.
Except when I talk(voice call) for a very long time.
Mine also same display always use up more then 70% and the battery can't even stand for 8 hrs, with very minimum usage 1hrs wifi, 20 min call, 1/2 hrs 3g, 1 hrs navigation(with charging). Have got battery replacement from samsung but still the same I read a post some where for UK set, the guy get 1 to 1 replacement, battery can last for 2 days for it new set, just wonder is it the flaw set we having that cause our battery drain? My friends told me that for his set from morning till after work (9 to 8 pm almost 11 hrs) battery only drop 10%. I really hope someone can help us to prove is samsung selling flaw set so we can claim 1 to 1 exchanges.

Report Your battery use Systematically (for comparison)

I have looked thru many battery use threads and it is quite difficult to compare or to draw any conclusion on whether there is some issue with battery use (i.e. whether battery drain is "normal").
How about we report based on 2 criteria:
- Idle means phone totally not being used + screen is off.
- Constant use means time you are using the phone (i.e. screen is on).
I know that everyone's phone setting may be different but at least we can know what is the reported range. Instead of depending on built-in software take readings, why dont we just take note of the battery use manually. For idle, use a period of 6hrs or more. Pls also state the settings you have.
Here is my figure for today:-
Firmware: JG4 (Singtel)
IDLE: (13% drain overnight ~9.3 hrs) : 1.4% per hour
(3G/background data/sync-on, wifi/gps/bt-off, weather/fb/tw/stock widgets update hourly)
CONSTANT: (19% drain over 57minutes): 18% per hour.

[Q] Battery life not as good as I thought on NAND

Hi everyone. I had NAND installed on my HD2 now for about a month and a half. One of the things that I haven't seen on my phone is better battery life. This is the first phone I have with a data plan so I'm really not sure how much of the battery drains with data. Here is my daily routine. I charge my phone overnight, by 11am-12pm my phone is just about dead. I put it on the charger until about 4pm; usually it's fully charged by then. By the time 10pm comes around it's almost dead again. Doesn't seem like good battery life to me. Someone please let me know if I'm missing something.
Thank you all!
Depends on what you're doing with your hd2.
If you spend a lot of time on the internet with either wifi or 3g, then that drains battery pretty quickly, as with any device. Playing games or watching videos is the same thing, although to a hiigher extent with games. Keeping the phone screen on is also one way to drain battery quickly.
You should install current widget and monitor your standby times, etc. In standy by, your phone should be consuming 4~6 mA ideally.
If you want to monitor your battery usage, first download and install CurrentWidget, enable logging while the phone is on standby to see your standby usage.
Second, need to check battery usage on standby after a call, there are some kernels with a known bug that prevents the phone from going to sleep, consuming 60ma on standby.
Third, Do a battery calibration, it does help a lot if you have never calibrated your battery, android tend to mess up battery reading after a while of not being calibrated. There's a thread about in on forums, search for it, REALLY good info there.
Fourth! check out if you are in a zone with crappy 3G, if the phone has to turn 2g/3g off and on too often it drains battery like whoa.
Fifth, take note of max and min voltage readings with CurrentWidget, your battery might by wearing out (should be maxing at 4.2v and min around 3.3v - 3.6v depending on kernel).
Another thing, before your phone dies, check out battery usage on Settings, see if any program is eating your battery, and check out how long has your screen been on, and post it here
I've always had WAY better battery in Android, even SD, than WMo, MSN/push email killed battery in WMo in about 6 hours, without use, just standby. Android get up to 4 days in standby with Gtalk/Gmail/Exchange Mail, all on Push, along with weather and twitter. With hardcore usage, the battery last between 6 and 7 hours top (Screen on for 4-5 hours), while Gaming, it wont last more than 4 hours (CPU at 100%, Screen always on, GPU at 100%, Brightness 100%).
Normal usage (between 40 mins and 1 hour of Google Maps with GPS on, between 3 and 4 hours of music thru Bluetooth with my car, 10-15 mins talking, about 20-30 SMSs and quite a bit of Gtalk) it makes it thru the day, lasting about 12-14 hours.
Such a low battery life is probably cause your phone is not going to sleep, it should be at 2-5 mah on standby.
Hope it helps
I can play an hour of pokemon (gba rom), listen to pandora whenever im in the car, surf the net for an hour or two, and with a total constant usage of about 5 hours, and at the end of the day ill be left with 30% battery still.
If I don't use it often it will last 40 hours +.
Maybe try a different nand rom?
Im running hyperdroid nand
Zephyrot and kangpeter, Im jealous of your battery life. I'll try what was posted. Thanks for the replies!

Battery Level Issue - Fix Suggestion

I don't know if my suggestion is wrong or if I'm a total n00b or what the deal is, but what is up with the battery level issues on this phone? It goes from 100% down to 80% in like a matter of minutes even with no usage, it then drops steadily down to 50%, then it drops suddenly to 15%, then goes down to 10%, then 5%, then 1%. How can it be so hard to calculate a battery level?
Now I bet someone is going to come in here and bash my idea, and I apologise in advance if I look like a moron, but shouldn't the calculation for the battery level be something along the lines of:
((Current Voltage - Minimum Voltage) / (Maximum Voltage - Minimum Voltage)) * 100 = Current Battery Percent
If that would work (even if only a little better than the current method), can someone PLEASE write at least a widget or something that displays the actual battery level, not this inaccurate level that Samsung claims it to be, and if possible modify whatever it is that calculates it and replace it with said formula?
I tried this formula on my phone using a simple calculator (using 4.1V as my max and 3.5V as my minimum and a battery level widget to display the current voltage) and it seemed to work fine for me and it was a lot more accurate. I just wish it could be automated.
I think that's a common issue on Galaxy 3. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes not.
I unplug it, after half an hour it's at 80%, then drops by 10% down to 50% and after that suddenly to 5%. Then I turn it off and on again and it returns to 50% or 60%.
But as I said, sometimes it's accurate, but I don't know what causes it.
I've tried some battery widgets, but they all display the same information.
That was a common issue that happens more frequently when you flash your phone without a full charged battery, when that happens i try to wait until the batery ends and wait 2 o 3 hours and charge the phone while its off until it shows full charge
Racoen said:
I think that's a common issue on Galaxy 3. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes not.
I unplug it, after half an hour it's at 80%, then drops by 10% down to 50% and after that suddenly to 5%. Then I turn it off and on again and it returns to 50% or 60%.
But as I said, sometimes it's accurate, but I don't know what causes it.
I've tried some battery widgets, but they all display the same information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, its the same with my G3.. But it always was like that, with eclair and now with froyo.
These are the files that regulate it (its in c, but you my be able to understand some parts of it without it).
They didnt calculate it like that, but used an if..else if ...else method. and with fixed values of multiples of ten (except for lower battery).
I dunno how to compile from the sources, when I do I'll change it and send it to KARMA.
Also, sometimes when its low it doesnt show it correctly. Try rebooting if you suspect that.
I've noticed that last 20-30% stays for almoust 10h, but first 80% only 1 day.
If it was only the faulty display of the percentage I normally wouldnt even care. There are many widgets that display the actual battery voltage which gives a much better indication of the actual SOC.
BUT: what really gets on my nerves is, that when the calculated battery level drops below some 10%, the G3 reduces the display brightness, doesnt let me use the camera, doesnt let me start my music app... even if the battery voltage is still at 3.7-3.8V.
The problem seems to be (correct me if i am wrong), that the G3 calculates the battery level with the minimum of the measured voltage in that discharge cycle. So if I use some app which consumes more power, or if I have many active downloads or whatever, the voltage of the battery can sag for a short time, which also causes the calculated battery level to drop. When the phone is idle again the battery voltage goes back up, but the percentage is stuck (in worst case at a very low level).
Since a reboot seems to make the phone re-evaluate the actual SOC, the question is, if there is an app (or if someone can make an app) that forces the phone to re-evaluate the SOC without rebooting (and so also reactivates camera etc.). Even better if the firmware was modified in a way, that the algorithm for determining the battery level uses a filtered value of the battery voltage so that a short term voltage sag does not affect the calculated battery level.

[Q] Recalculate battery life after getting big battery

I got my hands on the zerolemon 7500mah battery for my S4 about a month and a half ago and it is amazing.
With normal use (multiple e-mail push accounts, location tracking, wi-fi enabled etc) I get about 15% battery drop a day.
After a full charge, battery apps tell me "17-20 hours available."
Somehow the battery logic for android phones seems a bit off, it seems to be more a guestimate towards the current power use then the actual recorded battery run time.
Is there anything that can actually profile a battery ? Record the power use and battery voltage levels and give a more accurate picture over time ?
I *thought* android actually did this but apparently not, or its been because I'm only on my 4th charge since getting the battery but i'd like some confirmation if that's the case
I love this battery, this kind of battery life should be standard, only Android can't really deal with it properly yet .. the 15% battery alarm especially can be a pain: 'what do you mean battery low, its at 15% that's a full 24 hours!' and it still puts the phone in power saving mode.

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